1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medical apparatus system that performs charging management of a battery mounted on an apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
According to progress of a semiconductor technique, various apparatuses such as a cellular phone, a smartphone, and a tablet PC have been reduced in size and reduced in power consumption and have been configured to be portable. A portable apparatus is often mounted with a battery and configured to be continuously usable by charging the battery.
In a medical field as well, a reduction in size of an apparatus has been facilitated. For example, as an endoscope having relatively large power consumption, a portable endoscope mounted with a rechargeable battery has been developed. Endoscope apparatuses are used in various fields such as a medical field and an industrial field. The endoscope apparatus in the medical field is used for an observation of an organ in a body cavity, curative treatment performed using a treatment instrument, a surgical operation under an endoscopic observation, and the like. Note that a battery-driven electronic endoscope is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2006-280542.
The endoscope apparatus includes a processor that processes a picked-up image obtained by an electronic endoscope. Display on a monitor and recording in a recording medium of a medical image are performed by the processor. The portable endoscope incorporates a radio communication section that transmits an endoscopic image obtained by an image pickup device to the processor, a light source device for illuminating an object, and the like and is wirelessly configured. Therefore, the portable endoscope is excellent in portability and workability.
However, when the portability is taken into account, weight of a battery mounted on the electronic endoscope is limited. A battery capacity is also limited. Therefore, the electronic endoscope cannot always be driven by only one battery mounted on the electronic endoscope in an entire period of manipulation performed using the endoscope. Therefore, it is necessary to take into account replacement of the battery halfway in the manipulation. Even in this case, no problem arises if many batteries are stored as spares. However, realistically, a method of preparing several batteries and, while charging a battery not in use, when a residual capacity of a battery in use becomes insufficient, replacing the battery in use with the charged battery is adopted.
Note that a charger for charging the battery is configured to charge the battery with a current amount determined in advance. However, some chargers can change a charging current according to setting by a user. It is possible to perform quick charging by setting the charging current to a large current. It is also possible to change the battery to a completely charged state in a relatively short time.